INFLAMING THE SOCIAL ORGANISM
By George B. Thompson
REFERRING to the examination of Charles S. Mellen with reference to the part he has taken in bankrupting the New Haven Railroad, a paragraph from a recent editorial of one of our most widely read dailies says: “Nobody is in a better position to speak on the subject than Mr. Mellen. He was one of the officials paid an exorbitant salary. He was utterly servile in his obedience to the man who called him from a Western railroad and made him president of the New Haven Railroad, tossing him a $60,000 salary to keep him loyal. No director directed, if directing meant questioning the imperial will of Morgan. No statements issued to the stockholders were explicit enough to show why the $5,000,000 Westchester road was bought for $11,000,000, nor did they show political contributions nor sums expended in barefaced bribery.” An editorial from another great metropolitan daily, commenting upon the same thing, says: “But was Mr. Mellen set to work operating the New Haven road, building up the property, improving the service, increasing its net earnings, and developing the resources of the company? — Not at all. He was set to work corrupting politics, debauching government, prostituting public opinion, and obtaining the illicit privileges which were necessary to enable the Morgans and the Rockefellers and their associates on the New Haven board to carry out their program which finally ended in the wreck of the road.” These quotations are presented not for the purpose of either approving or condemning them. We are not in a position to know how fully or how fairly they present the truth, but we are in a position to affirm that these utterances are fairly representative of statements that are made in various publications continuously. The great Napoleons of finance are constantly held forth as corrupters of politics, oppressors of the poor, and otherwise made subjects of scorn and contempt, and we would not for one moment say that they are undeserving of all that is said. The foregoing are illustrations of the seed sowing. The following account of a recent occurrence in New York is an illustration of the harvest that is surely coming: The despatches tell of a mass-meeting held in New York City in which “John D. Rockefeller, Jr., was held personally responsible for the Colorado mine war.” Graphic stories of the horrors endured in Colorado were told by the wife of one of the miners. One of the orators at this meeting delivered a scathing denunciation of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Governor Ammons, of Colorado. One of his utterances was: “We charge that John D. Rockefeller, Jr., is primarily responsible and guilty for every life that was lost in Colorado. He may go to his Sunday-school classes every day, but never, from now until doomsday, will his conscience acquit him for causing the carnival of murder in the coal-fields of Colorado. Next to him we hold Governor Ammons guilty for sending his murderous militia there.” The wealthy men of this nation formed great combines with their money. They sent agents to state councils, to state legislatures, and into the United States Congress, for the purpose of accomplishing their ends by bribery and corruption. These facts have been brought out in the courts, in the legislative hearings, and in various ways. They have been told through magazines and in the news columns of the daily papers, and editorially commented upon. This has been the great seed sowing. The harvest-time is already here, and the men of wealth in this world are about to reap the results of their doing. An enraged populace is rising up against them, and they will soon be the center of a storm of violence and strife. This is not theory that we are presenting. We are not telling things that ought to be, but we are calling attention to matters as they exist. And in connection with this, we wish to keep before our readers continually that the apostle James saw these things two thousand years ago, and announced that in the last days the rich men would be called to “weep and howl” because of the miseries that are coming upon them, and this for the reason that they had held back the hire of the laborers who had reaped down their fields. It is well to read carefully and often the fifth chapter of the book of James. It is a divine commentary upon the very times in which we are living; and although it was written two thousand years ago, it presents most graphically the scenes that are about us. MANY of us must be purified in the furnace of affliction. The dross must be removed and the gold refined. It has been well said that “David’s pen never wrote more sweetly than when it was dipped in the ink of affliction.”